Prior art voice mail systems use series of pre-recorded messages to allow the voice mail system to interact with both incoming callers and subscribers to the voice mail system (those who have mailboxes on the system). Applications written for the voice mail system and the inputs made by incoming callers and/or subscribers determined which pre-recorded messages are played and the order in which they are played. These inputs are usually in the form of DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) tones generated when the caller or subscriber presses a button on the telephone keypad. Some of the pre-recorded messages include context related information. A common example of such a message is xe2x80x9cYou have  less than number greater than  new  less than message/messages greater than .xe2x80x9d The xe2x80x9c less than number greater than xe2x80x9d portion of the message is replaced by a pre-recorded message fragment of the appropriate number for the mailbox being accessed. Further, the system chooses whether to use a pre-recorded fragment for xe2x80x9cmessagexe2x80x9d or for xe2x80x9cmessagesxe2x80x9d depending on whether the numeric value of  less than number greater than  is 1 or another number. Prior art voice mail systems typically use one set of prerecorded messages for all subscribers and callers. This one set of prerecorded messages also uses a single voice for all of the messages in the set. The same person (voice talent) records each of the messages.
A problem with the prior art voice mail systems is that different people find different speech patterns appealing. Different people tend to like and thus better understand different voice patterns. Aspects of voice patterns include fast or slow speaking, sing-songy speaking or monotonatic, pitch, dialect and the gender of the speaker. Voice patterns also can reflect different personalities of the speaker.